Shooting and explosions reported in Jenin as Israel presses raid
A Palestinian official reported shooting and explosions in the flashpoint West Bank town of Jenin on Wednesday as Israeli forces pressed a raid that the military described as a “counter-terrorism” operation, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“The situation is very difficult,” Kamal Abu al-Rub, the governor of Jenin, told AFP. “The occupation army has bulldozed all the roads leading to the Jenin camp, and leading to the Jenin governmental hospital … There is shooting and explosions,” he added.
On Tuesday, Israeli forces launched an operation in Jenin which Palestinian officials said killed 10 people, just days after a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect in the Gaza Strip.
According to Abu al-Rub, Israeli forces detained about 20 people from villages near Jenin, a bastion of Palestinian militancy.
The Israeli military said it had launched a “counter-terrorism operation” in the area, and had “hit over 10 terrorists”. “Additionally, aerial strikes on terror infrastructure sites were conducted and numerous explosives planted on the routes by the terrorists were dismantled,” it said in a statement on Wednesday. “The Israeli forces are continuing the operation,” it added.
Key events
Israel said it will maintain control of the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip during the first phase of the ceasefire with Hamas.
A statement by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Wednesday denied reports that the Palestinian Authority would control the crossing.
The truce, now in its fourth day, is supposed to bring calm to the war-battered Gaza for at least six weeks and see 33 Hamas-held hostages released in return for hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
The statement said European Union monitors would supervise the crossing, which will be surrounded by Israeli troops. Israel also will approve the movement of all people and goods.
Shooting, explosions in Jenin as Israel presses raid
Gunfire and explosions rocked the occupied West Bank’s Jenin area on Wednesday, a Palestinian official and an AFP reporter said, as the Israeli military pressed on for a second day with a large-scale raid.
The operation, launched just days after a ceasefire paused fighting in Gaza, has left at least 10 Palestinians dead, according to Palestinian health authorities.
Israeli officials have said the raid is part of a broader campaign against militants in the occupied West Bank, citing thousands of attack attempts since the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas began in October 2023.
“The situation is very difficult,” Kamal Abu al-Rub, the governor of Jenin, told AFP.
“The occupation army has bulldozed all the roads leading to the Jenin camp and leading to the Jenin Governmental Hospital… There is shooting and explosions,” he added, referring to the Israeli military.
Israeli forces have detained around 20 people from villages around Jenin since the operation began on Tuesday, the official said.
An AFP correspondent reported that gunfire and explosions could be heard coming from Jenin refugee camp, a hotbed of militancy where Israeli forces have regularly carried out raids.
UN chief praises Trump’s large contribution’ to Gaza ceasefire
The United Nations chief Antonio Guterres on Wednesday hailed Donald Trump’s diplomatic efforts to help secure a truce in the Gaza Strip following 15 months of war.
“I will praise the United States, Qatar and Turkey for their efforts for months and months and months to obtain the release of hostages, also to obtain the ceasefire,” Guterres said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“There was a large contribution of the robust diplomacy of the at-the-time president-elect of the United States,” he added.
“I feel that when we had the position of Israel still reluctant to the ceasefire just two days before it happened, and then all of a sudden there was an acceptance,” he added.
Trump had warned there would be “hell to pay” if there was no agreement to release hostages held by Hamas.
The ceasefire has held since going into effect on Sunday, although Trump said at the start of the week that he was not confident it would hold.
In its first phase, the deal calls for the release of 33 hostages seized during the Palestinian militant group’s attack on southern Israel on October 7. But Guterres said it was not clear yet what the future relationship would look like between Israelis and Palestinians.
“One possibility is to move into annexation of the West Bank, probably a kind of a limbo situation in Gaza, which of course is against its national law and would mean there will never be peace in the Middle East,” he warned.
During his first term in the White House, Trump put forward a plan in 2020 that would have included major Israeli annexations in the West Bank.
In the days since a fragile ceasefire took hold in the Gaza Strip, Israel has launched a major military operation in the occupied West Bank and suspected Jewish settlers have rampaged through two Palestinian towns.
The violence comes as Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces domestic pressure from his far-right allies after agreeing to the truce and hostage-prisoner exchange with the Hamas militant group. U.S. President Donald Trump has, meanwhile, rescinded the Biden administration’s sanctions against Israelis accused of violence in the territory.
It’s a volatile mix that could undermine the ceasefire, which is set to last for at least six weeks and bring about the release of dozens of hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, most of whom will be released into the West Bank.
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and Palestinians want all three territories for their future state. Escalations in one area frequently spill over, raising further concerns that the second and far more difficult phase of the Gaza ceasefire — which has yet to be negotiated — may never come.
As we reported earlier (see 9.39am GMT) Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, has warned that the occupied West Bank could explode as Israel launched a deadly military operation in the city of Jenin.
Asked by a Palestinian delegate at the World Economic Forum in Davos about the situation, Safadi described it as “dangerous”, adding: “I think the whole world needs to take a deep look at what is happening, and, with the same vigour that we’re looking at the ceasefire, we should also be working to prevent an explosion in the West Bank.”
You can hear his comments in the video below:
The Palestinian civil emergency service and medical staff have recovered about 200 bodies since the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel came into effect on Sunday, reports Reuters.
Mahmoud Basal, the head of the service, told Reuters that extraction operations have been challenged by the lack of earth-moving and heavy machinery, adding that Israel had destroyed several of their vehicles and killed at least 100 of their staff.
Basal estimates the bodies of about 10,000 Palestinians killed in the war are yet to be found and buried.
A UN damage assessment released this month showed that clearing over 50m tonnes of rubble left in the aftermath of Israel’s bombardment could take 21 years and cost up to $1.2bn.
Thousands of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are searching for the bodies of relatives either missing under the rubble or buried in mass graves during Israeli ground raids.
Rabah Abulias, a 68-year-old father who lost his son Ashraf in an Israeli attack, told Reuters the he wants to give his son a proper grave.
“I know where Ashraf is buried, but his body is with dozens of others, there is no grave for him, there is no tomb stone that carries his name,” he told the news agency via a chat app from Gaza City.
Abulias said:
I want to make him a grave, where I can visit him, talk to him and tell him I am sorry I wasn’t there for him.”
Maria Talal and Hala Abdullah have reported on the reaction to the Iraqi parliament passing a law permitting children as young as nine years old to marry:
Iraqi MPs and women’s rights groups have reacted with horror to the Iraqi parliament passing a law permitting children as young as nine years old to marry, with activists saying it will “legalise child rape”.
Under the new law, which was agreed yesterday, religious authorities have been given the power to decide on family affairs, including marriage, divorce and the care of children. It abolishes a previous ban on the marriage of children under the age of 18 in place since the 1950s.
“We have reached the end of women’s rights and the end of children’s rights in Iraq,” said the lawyer Mohammed Juma, one of the most prominent opponents of the law.
The Iraqi journalist Saja Hashim said:
The fact that clerics have the upper hand in deciding the fate of women is terrifying. I fear everything that will come in my life as a woman.”
Activists said they feared the law would now also be applied retroactively to cases filed in courts before it was enacted, affecting rights to alimony and custody.
Raya Faiq, spokesperson for the feminist group Coalition 188, said:
We received an audio recording of a woman crying her eyes out because of the passage of this law, with her husband threatening to take her daughter away unless she gives up her rights to financial support.”
Child marriage has been a longstanding issue in Iraq, where 28% of girls were married before they turned 18, a 2023 UN survey found.
While marriage is presented to some underage girls as a chance to escape poverty, many of the marriages end in failure, bringing lifelong consequences for young women, including social shame and a lack of opportunities because of unfinished schooling.
Instead of tightening laws against underage marriage and helping girls from poorer backgrounds to complete their education, the new law allows the marriage of minors according to the religious sect under which the marriage contract is concluded.
UN secretary-general Guterres calls on Iran to renounce nuclear weapons
Iran must make a first step towards improving relations with countries in the region and the US by making it clear they do not aim to develop nuclear weapons, UN secretary-general, António Guterres, said on Wednesday.
“The most relevant question is Iran and relations between Iran, Israel and the United States,” Guterres said at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
He added:
Here my hope is that the Iranians understand that it is important to once and for all make it clear that they will renounce to have nuclear weapons, at the same time that they engage constructively with the other countries of the region.”
After months of negotiations, a ceasefire has paused the devastating war in Gaza, but it risks collapsing as a result of deep distrust between Israel and Hamas and the multi-phased nature of the deal, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Qatar, which mediated the talks along with the US and Egypt, has expressed hope the six-week truce and hostage-prisoner exchange will become permanent. However, that outcome is far from certain with the releases timetabled at a slower pace in comparison with a previous truce agreement.
Further complicating the ceasefire is the fact that the text of the agreement has not been made public, raising risks of last-minute snags and differences in interpretation by the parties.
“Unfortunately, there is a high risk of the truce derailing and [Israeli prime minister Benjamin) Netanyahu continuing his military campaign in Gaza,” Anna Jacobs, of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, told AFP.
The ceasefire kicked off to a rocky start, with delays in both the beginning of the truce and the first swap of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners when it went into effect on Sunday.
During a three-hour delay before the truce began, Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes killed eight people and injured 25.
The ceasefire is being monitored by the mediators via an “operations room” in Cairo, Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson, Majed al-Ansari, told Al Jazeera.
He said they are watching to see if the delicate terms of the deal are being implemented – including the entry of aid into Gaza, the prisoner and hostage exchanges, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from densely populated areas and the return of displaced Palestinians to their homes.
Here are some of the latest images coming in via the newswires:
Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, vowed to continue the assault in Jenin, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“It is a decisive operation aimed at eliminating terrorists in the camp,” Katz said in a statement on Wednesday, adding that the military would not allow a “terror front” to be established there.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military and the Shin Bet security agency announced that, in coordination with the border Police, they had launched an operation named “Iron Wall” in the area.
Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the raid aimed to “eradicate terrorism” in Jenin. He linked the operation to a broader strategy of countering Iran “wherever it sends its arms – in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen,” and the West Bank.
The Israeli government has accused Iran, which supports armed groups across the Middle East, including Hamas in Gaza, of attempting to funnel weapons and funds to militants in the West Bank.
United Nations secretary-general António Guterres called for “maximum restraint” from Israeli security forces and expressed deep concern, according to his deputy spokesperson, Farhan Haq.
Jenin and its refugee camp are known strongholds of Palestinian militant groups, and Israeli forces frequently carry out raids targeting armed factions in the area.
Violence has surged throughout the occupied West Bank since the Gaza war erupted on 7 October 2023. According to the Palestinian health ministry, Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 848 Palestinians in the West Bank since the Gaza conflict began.
At least 29 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations in the territory during the same period, according to official Israeli figures.
Shooting and explosions reported in Jenin as Israel presses raid
A Palestinian official reported shooting and explosions in the flashpoint West Bank town of Jenin on Wednesday as Israeli forces pressed a raid that the military described as a “counter-terrorism” operation, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“The situation is very difficult,” Kamal Abu al-Rub, the governor of Jenin, told AFP. “The occupation army has bulldozed all the roads leading to the Jenin camp, and leading to the Jenin governmental hospital … There is shooting and explosions,” he added.
On Tuesday, Israeli forces launched an operation in Jenin which Palestinian officials said killed 10 people, just days after a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect in the Gaza Strip.
According to Abu al-Rub, Israeli forces detained about 20 people from villages near Jenin, a bastion of Palestinian militancy.
The Israeli military said it had launched a “counter-terrorism operation” in the area, and had “hit over 10 terrorists”. “Additionally, aerial strikes on terror infrastructure sites were conducted and numerous explosives planted on the routes by the terrorists were dismantled,” it said in a statement on Wednesday. “The Israeli forces are continuing the operation,” it added.
‘It is dangerous what is happening there’, says Jordan FM on West Bank
Asked about recent events in the occupied West Bank, Jordan’s foreign minister said that “maintaining the security of the West Bank” is of “top priority”, warning that otherwise it could “destabilise the whole region”.
Asked by a Palestinian delegate at the World Economic Forum in Davos if there is a strategy in play with neighbouring countries to protect the West Bank, Ayman Safadi responded:
The West Bank has been on our radar since day one. As you know, we have a tremendous interest in the West Bank. It is on our border. It could destablise the whole region. And again, we’ve been working very, very hard – including directly with the Israelis, with our American friends, with our European friends [and] with the Palestinians – to make sure that the West Bank does not explode.
Because, if it does explode then I think we’ll be talking about [an] even broader [conflict]. There is a moment of opportunity in the region right now with all that’s happening in Lebanon, Syria, the ceasefire, and I think we should not leave the fate of the future of the region to some radicals, some short-termists, some idealogically driven individuals and parties who just do not see beyond the moment.
I think maintaining the security of the West Bank, making sure the West Bank does not explode is something of top priority and it is dangerous what is happening there. And I think the whole world needs to take a deep look at what is happening, and again with the same vigour that we’re looking at the ceasefire, we should also be working to prevent an explosion on the West Bank.”
Gaza needs more than a ‘short term’ solution, says Jordan FM speaking at Davos
Jordan’s foreign minister, speaking at the second day of the World Economic Forum in Davos, said that there needs to be more than a “short term” solution for Gaza.
Ayman Safadi told a room of delegates that a “comprehensive solution that addresses the root causes” is needed, stressing that the Israel-Gaza conflict has “global implications”.
Safadi said:
On Gaza, we cannot think short term … The key is: do we continue to think short term and just solve this problem only to face it again? Or do we really assess why we are here and what is it going to take to make sure that we aren’t here again?
And my answer to that is a comprehensive solution that addresses the root causes of the problem; that is there are the Palestinian peoples out there who want their freedom and their state and there is an Israel out there as well that is going to remain in the region and we need to figure out a way for the two people to live together. None of them is leaving, so I think again … left to their own they will not solve it.
This is [a] problem of global implications. We’ve seen the whole world dragged into this conflict so I think it is upon all of us to agree on a solution and then enforce that solution to the extent that we can, because other than that, we’ll find ourselves here in two [or] three years.”
New York representative Elise Stefanik endorsed Israeli claims of biblical rights to the entire West Bank during a US Senate confirmation hearing. The US president, Donald Trump, nominated Stefanik to be his UN ambassador.
The confirmation hearing highlighted very real rifts between the US and UN over Israel policy. Stefanik’s view is at odds with international consensus regarding Israeli settlements in occupied territories, although it remains in line with the Trump administration posturing.
French investigating magistrates have issued an arrest warrant against ousted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad for suspected complicity in war crimes, notably the launch of a deliberate attack on civilians, a legal source said late on Tuesday, according to Reuters.
The mandate was issued on 20 January as part of an investigation into the case of Salah Abou Nabour, a Franco-Syrian national, who was killed on 7 June 2017 in a bombing raid in Syria.
This is the second arrest warrant issued by French judges, for the former Syrian leader, who was overthrown in early December 2024 by insurgent forces led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
In November 2023, French judges had issued a first warrant against Bashar al-Assad on charges of complicity in crimes against humanity and complicity in war crimes.
It followed a French investigation into chemical attacks in Douma and the district of eastern Ghouta in August 2013 that killed more than 1,000 people. Assad’s government has in the past denied using chemical weapons against its opponents in the civil war, which broke out in March 2011.
Qatari, US and Egyptian negotiators set up Cairo hub to shore up Gaza ceasefire
Emma Graham-Harrison
Qatari, US and Egyptian negotiators are running a communications hub in Cairo to protect the ceasefire in Gaza, as Donald Trump said he was not confident the break in fighting would hold.
Violations have already been reported. Medics in Gaza said on Monday that eight people had been hit by Israeli fire. The start of the ceasefire was also delayed when Hamas did not provide the names of hostages to be released.
Trump claimed credit for the deal when his envoy helped to break months of deadlock to secure it before his inauguration. But asked after the event on Monday if he thought it would last, he appeared to distance himself from the conflict. “That’s not our war. It’s their war,” he told reporters.
A top Qatari diplomat said on Tuesday that negotiators were confident the US president would support the deal because his team had played a critical role in securing it.
“If it wasn’t for [Trump] this deal wouldn’t be in place right now. So we are banking on the support of this administration,” said Majed al-Ansari, an adviser to the Qatari prime minister and foreign ministry spokesperson. Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, was in touch on a daily basis, he said.
The first stage of the ceasefire is scheduled to last for six weeks. Negotiations on the more challenging second phase are expected to start in early February.
Trust on both sides is negligible, so the communications hub is intended to prevent the ceasefire breaking down under accusations of violations.
Suspected settlers attacked Palestinian villages hours before Trump rescinded Biden sanctions
Shortly after suspected Jewish settlers stormed Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank late Monday, setting cars and property ablaze, US president Donald Trump cancelled sanctions against Israelis accused of violence in the territory, reports the Associated Press (AP).
Settler leaders rushed to praise Trump’s decision on the sanctions, which were first imposed nearly a year ago as violence surged during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. The sanctions were later expanded to include other Israelis seen as violent or radical.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, called it a just decision, saying the sanctions were a “severe and blatant foreign intervention.” In a post on social media platform X, he went on to praise Trump’s “unwavering and uncompromising support for the state of Israel”.
At her confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Republican Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick for US ambassador to the United Nations, said Israel had a “biblical right” to the occupied territory.
The AP reports that late on Monday, dozens of masked men who are widely believed to be settlers marauded through at least two Palestinian villages and attacked homes and businesses, according to officials in Jinsafut and al-Funduq, which are roughly 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Jerusalem.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said it treated 12 people who were beaten by the men. It gave no details on their condition. Israel’s military said the men hurled rocks at soldiers who had arrived to disperse them, and that it had launched an investigation.
Jalal Bashir, the head of Jinsafut’s village council, told the AP that the men attacked three houses, a nursery and a carpentry shop located on the village’s main road. Louay Tayem, head of the local council in al-Funduq, said dozens of men had fired shots, thrown stones, burned cars, and attacked homes and shops.
“The settlers were masked and had incendiary materials,” said Bashir. “Their numbers were large and unprecedented.”
On Tuesday, the charred shells of cars lay on the side of the road in Jinsafut and residents surveyed the damage to a burned storage space, according to the AP.
Here is a summary of other key updates in the Middle East:
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Qatari, US and Egyptian negotiators are running a communications hub in Cairo to protect the ceasefire in Gaza, as Donald Trump said he was not confident the break in fighting would hold. Violations have already been reported. Medics in Gaza said on Monday that eight people had been hit by Israeli fire. The start of the ceasefire was also delayed when Hamas did not provide the names of hostages to be released.
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The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, called on Israel’s security forces to exercise “maximum restraint” after a major Israeli military operation in the West Bank city of Jenin. The UN chief “remains deeply concerned” about the violence and “urges security forces to exercise maximum restraint and use lethal force only when it is strictly unavoidable to protect life,” a spokesperson for Guterres said.
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At least nine Palestinians were killed and 40 people were injured during the Israeli operation in Jenin, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Three nurses and two doctors were also injured by Israeli fire during the military operation, which took place as the Gaza ceasefire entered a third day, the director of Khalil Suleiman hospital in Jenin said.
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Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the Jenin operation was “another step towards achieving the goal we set – strengthening security in Judea and Samaria”. He said it included police, military and the Shin Bet internal intelligence agency.
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Israel’s top general Lt Gen Herzi Halevi resigned as the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Tuesday. He cited the “terrible failure” of security and intelligence related to Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. The Israeli opposition leader, Yair Lapid, said he saluted Halevi’s decision and also called on Netanyahu and his government to resign. Maj Gen Yaron Finkelman, the head of Israel’s Southern Command, which oversees operations in Gaza, also tendered his resignation on Tuesday.
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Hamas said four more female Israeli hostages will be freed this weekend in return for Palestinian prisoners. The next group of hostages due to be released is expected to include captured female Israeli soldiers, who will be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners serving more lengthy sentences who are being held in Israeli jails, some of whom will be deported to third countries.
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The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, held a call with his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu. No 10 said Starmer told Netanyahu that he peace process in the Middle East should pave the way for a “viable and sovereign” Palestinian state. An Israeli readout of the call said Starmer faced pressure from Netanyahu over frozen arms sales to Israel.
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The west should seize the opportunity to target the Tehran-backed Houthi leadership in Yemen while the Iranian government is weakened, the vice-president of the UN-backed government in Aden, Aidarus al-Zoubaidi, has said. Iran’s reverses in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza had left the country “massively weakened”, he said, adding: “Now is the time to counter the Houthis and push them back into their position.”
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Iraq’s parliament has passed amendments to the country’s personal status law that opponents say would in effect legalise child marriage. The amendments give Islamic courts increased authority over family matters, including marriage, divorce and inheritance. Activists argue that this undermines Iraq’s 1959 Personal Status Law, which unified family law and established safeguards for women.
